QuestionerWhen you were younger, what first sparked your interest in investing, and what advice would you give a younger person if they wanted to invest in the stock market? Thank you.
WarrenWell, I'm not exactly. I got interested probably when I was maybe seven or thereabouts. I wasted my time before that. It's a little like W.C. Fields, when he inherited some money, somebody asked them what he did with it, and he said he spent half of it on whiskey and the rest he wasted. So there I was dawdling around. But I got in, my dad was in the business. So I would go down to his office and I would see these interesting books and I would read them and I would go down. He was on the fourth floor of what's now known as the Omaha building at 17th and Farnham. And on the second floor was Harris Hupperman Company. And they had a board. And I would go down there. The market was open on Saturdays in those days. So I could for two hours. so I could go down on Saturday. And I saw all these interesting things going across the tape. And I just read a lot. I probably took every book in the Omaha Public Library, though, and every book they had on investing, or the stock market, basically. I was very interested in New York Stock Exchange. I thought maybe I'd want to become a specialist when I grew up, and maybe I still will. But the, uh, uh, uh, I took all the books out. I read them. And finally, when I was 11, I bought three shares of stock. And I didn't know. I was fascinated by the subject. My dad got elected to Congress, so now the library became even bigger. And I took all the books I could out of there on markets. And I used to chart and do all that sort of thing. And then finally, I read Graham's book when I was at the University of Nebraska, the Intelligent Investor, when I was 19, and that just changed my whole framework. But the advice I would give is to read everything in sight, you know, and to start very young. It's a huge advantage in almost any field to start young. And if that's where your interest lies and you start young and you read a lot, you're going to, you're going to do well. I mean, there are no, there are no secrets in this business that only the priesthood knows. I mean, you know, we do not go into, we do not go into temples and look at tablets that are only available to those who have passed earlier tests or anything. It's all out there in black and white. It's a simple business. I talked about reading the annual reports of Anheiser Bush for 25 years, but I've read the reports of Coca-Cola and Gillette and all kinds of companies long before we invested in them. And if you enjoy the game, you know, you'll find that like playing bridge or playing baseball or whatever. And if you don't enjoy it, you're probably won't do well on it. But I would advise you to start early, read everything in sight, look for the successful framework that's been successful for people. And there's nothing like Graham's, in my view. And you'll have a lot of fun and you'll probably make a lot of money.